


burning hot

by owlinaminor



Series: author's favorites [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Lyrical prose, M/M, shiratorizawa match
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9218639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: "As Tendou would say, my hands are burning hot."





	

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [the panel that got me to start shipping ushiten](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/post/135855713700/am-i-allowed-to-ship-ushijimatendou-can-i-do), way back in december 2015, and extended from [a drabble i posted on tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/post/153460612130/burning-hot) a couple of months ago. i wanted to try this virginia woolf-esque thing i call "thickening a moment"; i wrote about all the thoughts and emotions around and within one line of canon dialogue. please tell me how you think i did.
> 
> written in honor of ushiten day. because, wow, ushiten. i mean, do you ever just think about ushiten? like. ushiten. how incredible is that?
> 
> i managed not to compare ushijima to a tree at all in this one; [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis) is "boggled."

Wakatoshi never doubts that he will win.

He knows what other people say about him – in the stands at tournaments, in the magazine articles, even in the hallways of his own school.  He’s a machine.  He’s a cannon.  He’s a clap of thunder.  He’s an unstoppable force of nature, never tiring or faltering or failing.  He’s the reason that Shiratorizawa can push through any obstacle, emerge victorious against any opponent.  He’s a spear smashing through enemy defenses to puncture the hearts of his challengers.  He’s everything Shiratorizawa needs in an ace.

Wakatoshi knows what other people say about him, but he does not dwell on metaphors.  He focuses on his own strength – on the stretch of his muscles when he pulls his arm back and the burn in his legs when he jumps and the slam of the ball when it smacks into the court.  He has trained for years for this feeling, has jumped until his legs felt as though they were going to give out and spiked until his arms felt as though they were weighed down with lead.  He runs ten kilometers every morning.  He serves one hundred times every night.  He pushes until victory is not a challenge – it’s an assurance, natural as the pumping of his heart in his chest.

Wakatoshi knows what other people say about him – but more importantly, he knows what his team says about him.  He’s a super volleyball ace, focusing on the sport and nothing but the sport, narrowing his focus to the stretch of his arms and the burn of his legs.  He’s a captain who will lead his teammates to victory no matter their opponent, because the odds are always in his favor.  He’s a spiker who has fought to guarantee those odds – and if he seems intimidating, if he seems harsh, it is only because he knows exactly the scale of his team’s capabilities.  His presence at the back of the court is a cheer louder than what the entire rest of the school could shout.

Wakatoshi’s father had told him, when he was first learning to play volleyball, the ball large and round in his hands like a newly born star, that he would need to surround himself with strong players to become stronger – that he would need to play with people who could keep up with him, play against people who would challenge him.  His father had told him how it felt to stand with his team’s ace, who would make his teammates feel as though they could score points in any situation – but he never told him how it would feel to _be_ that ace, to stand at the top of a mountain with his teammates looking up as though, if he leapt from the summit, they would follow.  To stand at the top of a mountain in near-freezing air, tall and strong like a warning that anyone who dares to face him will burn up in a futile attempt to reach his peak.

Wakatoshi never doubts that he will win – and when his spike hits, halfway through the fourth set in a match against some no-name public school, it should align easily with the slow rise and fall of his chest.  The spike hits like a battering ram, like a round of artillery, like a clap of thunder.  The ball slams into the ground loud enough that the whole stadium can feel the floor shake.  And Wakatoshi _knows_ that it is a point to Shiratorizawa – that his team should expect nothing less from him – that this should be easy – but something new and almost familiar rushes through him, as though a fire long left to grow cold has been sparked into new life.

Wakatoshi’s palms sting with the victory.  His palms have not stung quite like this in a long time.

His palms are red - red as a stoplight putting all traffic at a busy intersection to a halt, as the signs waving in the stands above him, as Satori’s hair blazing furiously on the other side of the court.  Satori stands caught between the left-most line and the end zone, slouching as though nobody has ever told him that he is tall.

Satori stands easy, stands comfortable, stands relaxed.  He looks as though he’s about to jump into a lively dance.  But Wakatoshi knows this is not true – knows that beneath his calm, beneath his easy grin and his slouch, there’s a beast on its toes, waiting to strike.

Wakatoshi knows this because he has seen it – he has seen Satori arch over the court like a dragon, scaly wings lifting from his back and arching into the sweat-soaked air as his arms rise to steal a point for his team – the first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred, and Satori takes it from the enemy with his arms and his legs and his jeering tongue and pulls it into himself – never tiring, never losing heart, always growing stronger.

Wakatoshi knows this because he has heard it – he has heard Satori call out from across the court like a siren, luring innocent sailors with promises of their deepest desires and smashing their heads on the rocks – or like a siren, strapped onto a truck red as his hair, wailing through the streets as it chases a fire it can never quite extinguish – or like pealing bells, echoing through a clear Sunday morning with a message of saving grace.

Wakatoshi knows this because he has felt it – he has felt Satori tear him to pieces after they leave the court, pushed into a storage room long after the rest of the team has gone home, Satori’s fingers on his chest Satori’s teeth on his neck Satori’s voice asking _is this okay_ into the warmth between his legs – Satori tears him to pieces, examines each piece like an engineer discovering a new invention, and puts him back together slowly, carefully, methodically as though he is a god composing the world.

Wakatoshi knows what Satori says about him.  Miracle boy.  Super ace.  Beautiful form.  Satori casts him in ice like a sculpture waiting to break and then chips away at him with words and gestures and glances he doesn’t think Wakatoshi sees.  He tells Wakatoshi he’s not going to rely on him today – and then he jumps high, sneers low, steals points from the midst of the enemy’s maelstrom.

Satori stands easy, but he never quite stands up straight.  He ducks his head, twists his body like a contortionist trying to fit into a precisely shaped box – a box built for someone who follows rules and blocks and captains.  He’s a terrible actor, Wakatoshi thinks.  He contorts himself smaller as though it isn’t painfully obvious that he wants to burn bright – that he wants to be the star on the court, not on the top of the mountain but within it, blazing the way up for the rest of his team.

Satori is a combustion engine – zero to one-twenty in the time it takes some no-name setter to maneuver around one of his blocks.  And Wakatoshi is an ice sculpture – stuck at seventy, stuck at natural, stuck at the easy minimum it will take to win.

But there is something different today.  Something different in this point, in this game, in this team.  This no-name public school pushing Shiratorizawa to a fourth set, pushing Wakatoshi’s mountain ever so slightly off its axis.  Setting Wakatoshi’s palms on fire as though he’s Satori or Tsutomu or even the tiny middle blocker on the other side of the net – as though he still has space to climb.

Wakatoshi knows what people say about him.  He’s a machine, a cannon, an unstoppable force of nature.  But just because people say something doesn’t make it true – after all, his mother once told him that being left-handed was a weakness.  And yet, if a new path is indeed opening itself before him… he has been frozen at the top for so long now, he’s not quite sure how to keep moving.

And then, he meets Satori’s eyes.  Zero to one-twenty.

Satori is a beast waiting to strike, and he is a beast waiting to heal.  Bright red hair, brilliant blue eyes.  Roaring thunderstorm and sun-drenched sky.  Always changing and always reliable.  Oni and oni.  Chipping away at the ice around Wakatoshi until all that remains is a blazing star.  He plays each game as though it could be his last – as though he is challenging everyone he faces to meet him at the finish line.

Wakatoshi has never wanted to reach that finish line – to grip that blazing star – quite as much as he does right now.

Wakatoshi knows how he feels about Satori, and he knows what that means.  He does not like to imagine when he can learn, but with Satori, he can’t stop himself from _reaching_ – and he can imagine today, pushed into a storage room after the game – four months from now, hands held high and faces split with grins at Nationals – four years from now, sprinting across a crowded train station after college graduation – forty years from now, sitting on the front porch of a small house surrounded by sunflowers – he can imagine a lifetime, sketched out between the lines on his palms and the expression on Satori’s lined face as he meets Wakatoshi’s gaze.

Wakatoshi’s hands are burning hot.

  


> _As Tendou would say, my hands are burning hot._

**Author's Note:**

> rant with me about how the anime fucked up the best part of the haikyuu manga on [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) & [tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


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